Don Merton: The Man Who Saved the Black Robin by Alison Ballance

Reed, $40. Reviewed By DUNCAN CRAIG

In a world that treats an individual death as a tragedy, it’s hard to admit that extinction is inevitable. Don Merton’s life in conservation is profoundly influenced by the extinction of Stead’s bush wren, the Stewart Island snipe and the greater short-tailed bat in the 1970s. Rats got onto their last island refuge off Stewart Island, and Merton witnessed their end personally. It made him determined to intervene to thwart other species’ destruction. Read more »

The Bolger Years: 1990-1997, edited by Margaret Clark

Dunmore Publishing. $38. Review by ALISON McCULLOCH

If there’s one thing from the Bolger years that the Nats seem to hate almost as much as Winston Peters, it’s MMP, and it was the Nats who created them both. MMP, which was ushered in on Jim Bolger’s watch, was “a tragedy of errors” and “our big institutional mistake,” says Ruth Richardson, National’s Mother of all Finance Ministers; it creates “distortions” in the political process, argues Geoff Thompson, a former MP and Party president; and, worst of all, it is precisely what allows people like Winston Peters to survive, at least in the opinion of Bill Birch, a former National cabinet minister. Read more »

Growing up, Halina Ogonowska-Coates would find bread hidden in strange places around the house. Her mother had put it there – she had a lifelong obsession with hoarding bread in case she ever found herself without food again. LAURA MCQUILLAN talks to Ogonowska-Coates about her recently re-published book Krystyna’s Story and growing up in New Zealand as the daughter of a Polish refugee. Read more »

Beijing Coma by Ma Jian

Chatto & Windus, $37. Reviewed :By Jeremy Rose

My first conversation in China was with a spastic street cleaner in Guangzhou. After establishing I was from New Zealand he asked whether the Treaty of Waitangi had been ratified and whether Bill Andersen was still a “major” politician. Amazed, I asked him how he knew so much about New Zealand and he replied that for a decade or more New Zealand’s The People’s Voicewas the only English language paper in the Guangzhou library. Read more »

Poem of the Week: Mended by Annie Villiers

From: Parallel Lines: Riding the Central Otago Rail Trail by Annie Villiers and John Z Robinson

Longacre Press, 2007. $30

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By Simon Nathan

Blackball is a remote and bleak West Coast mining town in the shadow of the Paparoa Range. The main mine closed over 50 years ago, but a small, fiercely loyal community remains. People with Blackball connections have fond memories of a town that probably seems better through nostalgia-tinted lenses. Although these books cover a period of more than 100 years, a common theme is that life in Blackball was tough. Read more »

MEDIA RELEASE
Man of the People – David Geary
Award-winning playwright (Lovelock’s Dream Run, The Learner’s Stand), short fiction writer, occasional poet and SRB reviewer David Geary has returned from Canada to be the 2008 Creative New Zealand/Victoria University Writer in Residence and write a play about Mark Twain in New Zealand. He’s also very interested in tuatara. Twain and tuatara will be just two of the topics discussed with Playmarket director Mark Amery.
Where: National Library of New Zealand Auditorium
When: 11 August 1 – 2pm.

Writers on Mondays is presented by the International Institute of Modern Letters in partnership with the National Library of New Zealand. They are open to the public and free of charge.

SRB Picks of of the Week 4 August 2008

:By Jeremy Rose

In this week’s SRB Picks’: Ecuador proposes giving legal rights to Nature; Scott Ritter claims the US is already responsible for murderous attacks on Iran; Randy Newman – of Short People fame – on his new album; George Pelecanos on growing up Greek and homicides; an edgy new graphic novel, and; why is every progressive and his dog now calling for a New Deal? Read more »

Unity Books is a Wellington institution. Year after year it’s named Wellington’s best bookshop by papers and magazines that like to run such lists. It’s the bookshop of choice for many of the capital’s most discerning readers and so it’s with great pleasure that the Scoop Review of Books brings you Unity’s Top 20 for July 08. And from now on we’ll publish The Unity Top 20 monthly. (To our regret we’ve only reviewed two of the books on this month’s list. Links to those are provided.) Read more »